The Birds and the Bees

[Lanolin]

I once asked my mum, how was I born and was it painful, and she said...honestly I kid you not - it was like going to the toilet.

She must have squatted and pushed which was what she meant. But a baby is much bigger than a number 2.

 

[Lanolin]

I also played 'mothers and fathers' when growing up, either pretend role play or pretend with stuffed toys. But my ragdolls (called Jemimas) had immaculate conceptions, because my ragdolls were girls, and there were no boy ragdolls. I just had to make up a mythical creator ragdoll that nobody could see.

 

[Godsgirl1983]

She also asked where she'd get her baby from.

OHHHHHHHHHHHh I KNOOOOW where my babies came from

Sarah laughed before, in doubt.
I laughed after everything was all said and done and they were running around old enough to say "How'd we get out of your tummy?"

 

[blueluna5]

Parents, what do you tell your children when they ask 'how was I made'? Or 'where do babies come from'?

Do you remember what YOUR parents told you? Or did you find out for yourself? How old were you when you were told 'the facts of life'?

I was 9 and my mom gave me a book and told me to ask if I had questions.

I think anything would be better than that.

 

[Godsgirl1983]

I was 9 and my mom gave me a book and told me to ask if I had questions.

I think anything would be better than that.

I had gathered a large selection of books from the library about puberty (boys) that I wanted to go through before letting my son look through them. He was around 9/10 then. I should have known better, he always was a book worm since before he could crawl; and before I ever really looked through them, he got ahold of them. I never did go through them and ended up taking them back.
One day he made a comment (I don't remember what, something crazy about body hair or something like that)) and puzzled I asked "Well, you're not wrong, but where did you learn that?"
"Those books."
"What books?"
"All those puberty books from the library you never gave us"
( this was before he had internet access and friends outside the family circle)
I wasn't going to flat out give them the books to read alone, I just wanted to figure what to say to a boy about their changing selves (or at least be able to answer questions that may arise without the awkward "go ask your dad" answers. This was back when my son still had enough child naiveness to think Mom knew everything just before he realized I don't.

 

[Lanolin]

At my school library they had next to nothing, so I bought some picture books with easy explainable pictures, and the non-fiction I had a few books for girls, but there didn't seem to be much for boys. They had a puberty talk for the year 5-6s, they took the girls and boys separately with a nurse.

I didn't get that until year 8 I think, and it was just about menstruation, and then year 9 in high school we had health class, and they finally talked about safe sex. But they never talked about pregnancy, just preventing it. You had to take a special class called child development if you wanted to study it, but I was already taking bursary subjects to get into University and had no room in the timetable for that kind of subject. I just think what I had at school was a bit woeful. You learn more from teen magazines like Dolly and graduate to Cosmo for the ins and outs. My big sis had those, so I would sneak-read them.